INTRODUCTION.

THE manuscript from which the contents of this volume are taken was purchased by me at Suez in 1895. With the exception of one paper leaf, f. 12, it is vellum, and is a palimpsest throughout. Each leaf measures 20 centimetres by 12¾, and contains from 16 to 19 lines of the later script. This is closely written Arabic of the 9th or 10th century; it represents selections from the Fathers, St Athanasius, St Chrysostom, Anba Theodosius, Mar Ephraim, Mar Jacob, Mar Isaac and the Martyrdoms of St Eleutherius and St Theodorus. These may be dealt with in a subsequent volume, but it is the under script with which we are at present concerned, and with regard to the upper one I content myself with quoting the opinion of Mr A. Cowley, of Wadham College, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, to whom some photographs of ff. 13 a, 20 b, 150, 151 have been submitted.

"The upper writing is itself early. I remember seeing many specimens of it at Sinai, and puzzling out the probable date of it then. Plate XX., in the Palæographical Society's facsimiles, is very like it; and is dated A.D. 885. Curiously enough, it was written from Sinai. Your MS. may have been written about the same date, but I think the writing is not quite so careful as that in the Palæographical Society's book, and is probably somewhat later. As the Palæographical Society's MS. was written near the end of the 9th century, I think we cannot be far wrong in putting your MS. in the 10th century. On the other hand, it has some early characteristics, e.g. تش t-sh for ش sh. Also the Palæographical Society's MS. lacks some early characteristics, which one would expect in this hand in the 9th century, e.g. it does not write ڧ q for ف f.

"I spent some time at Sinai over these hands. At first, I was inclined to put them all down as 9th century. Afterwards, judging chiefly from bilingual Psalters, etc., I came to the conclusion that nearly all were of the 10th century, though some were undoubtedly of the 9th. At this distance of time one's memory is not quite fresh1, but I have little hesitation in assigning your upper writing to the "early" 10th century. That being so, we shall not be far wrong in dating your lower writing2 about 750 A.D. or at any rate in the 8th century."

1: Mr Cowley visited Sinai in 1894.
2: The Corân script.